UK Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday night urged Israel to refrain
from a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program and said time should be given
for sanctions, including new European Union measures today, to work.
Cameron told the
annual dinner of the United Jewish Israel appeal that he had told Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, “now is not the time for Israel to resort to
military action,” British newspaper The Telegraph reported.
“At the very moment when the regime
faces unprecedented pressure and the people are on the streets, and when Iran’s
only real ally in Syria is losing his grip on power, a foreign military strike
is exactly the chance the regime would look for to unite his people against a
foreign enemy. We shouldn’t give them that chance,” he said.
EU foreign
ministers meeting in Luxembourg Mondayapproved tighter sanctions on Iran and
its finance, energy and transport industries in a bid to persuade the
government to permit more scrutiny of its nuclear program. The ministers froze
the assets of 34 Iranian entities to hinder the ability to raise funds for the
program, which the US and European nations say is aimed at producing weapons.
The measures follow an oil embargo and a central-bank asset freeze earlier this
year.
"Iran is not
just a threat to Israel. It is a threat to the world," Cameron said.
"A negotiated settlement remains within Iran's grasp for now. But until
they change course, we have a strategy of ever tougher sanctions," he
added.
The measures
taken by the EU, which complement US restrictions and are meant to close
loopholes in existing European sanctions, come after talks on Iranian atomic
activities yielded little progress and the Israeli government warned of a
growing threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. The Islamic republic says its atomic
program is for civilian purposes.
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